A Single Question?
Two weeks from tomorrow an election will be held. While every Presidential election is certainly important I (and many others) think this one rises to being particularly portentous.
Jonn plans to LiveBlog tonight’s debate and that prompted this post.
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If you could pose s single question to either candidate what might that question be?
Unlike the actual debate we won’t be assiduously following any rules save one: The subject is foreign policy.
Oh what the hell – this is TAH after all.
Try to keep it down to a single question per comment anyway so others can respond more easily.
Mine: President Obama, Sir. Can you point to any specific example where our foreign aid to an Middle Eastern Islamic government has made them more friendly to the US and our foreign policy goals? (Edited with a nod to TSO and his recent ‘boots on the ground’ experience).
Category: Geezer Alert!, Politics
Mr President and Governor Romney-
what role do you see for the US in world affairs, and how will you use the US military to achieve those goals?
If I was moderator: Gentlemen I am going to suspend the rules briefly. Mr President I am going to afford you as much time as needed to explain to the American public exactly what happened in the attack on our consulate in Benghazi. Please include any prior knowledge you may or may not have had in regards to the security situation prior to the attack, your response during and immediately after the attack and whether or not you are willing to divulge the actual reasons for the attack. I believe the American people have heard from your surrogates, various press reports and other information sources and still do not have a clear picture, so please could you shed some light on this. My apologies to Mr Romney but we will get to the debate shortly.
Sir, the United Nations, at the invitation of supporters of your party, will be sending observers to polling places across the US. What do you plan to do to assist them and will they be going to Philadelphia specifically to observe the New Black Panthers?
I’ll be contrarian here. My question: how are we going to get the economy back on track and get a larger fraction of Americans working again?
Rationale: if the economy collapses, we won’t have a strong military – because we won’t be able to afford a strong military. And if we don’t reverse the current downward trend in the fraction of Americans working (which has dropped at an exceptionally stead rate of nearly 0.05% per month, or 0.6% per year, since January 2009) we’re looking at a serious economic crisis if not a collapse.
Senegal.
Mr. President, if reelected, what will you do to ensure sensitive information is not leaked by your administration, and how will you protect our intelligence assets overseas?
Mr President, Exactly how much money does the US give to Islamic nations in support or otherwise?
TSO #5: Okay, I’ll edit to reflect your expertise.
What is the sum of the distance from a pitcher’s mound to home plate in Major League Baseball and the width of an American football field?
“How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?”
(Neither will really provide an honest answer to any other question – if I give them each a lollipop, something constructive might come out of the session.)
@10 – No, they would fall back on the famous Hoot Owl commercial and blame the answer on that!!
Governor Romney, when you look at various areas across the Middle East including Syria, Libya, Iran, and Egypt, are there any areas where you would be willing to commit troops? More specifically, on Syria both Gov. Romney and Pres. Obama have proposed arming the rebels, but neither have gone any further than that. In 2007, Gov Romney stated that he would use tactical nukes to pre-emptively strike Iran. Would he still say the same thing? Gov Romney repeatedly criticized Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq. If Romney had won the election in 2008, how many troops would still be in Iraq right now?
OK, so I might have gone over the “one question” suggestion.
The first question that came to mind, Zero, you pretty much summed up.
The only other question I have is:
Since all the Green Energy companies are beginning to go belly up and go bankrupt, how do you plan on getting all the tax dollar bailout money back?
Not to be too critical; but some posters seem to either be in the tank for the President or just plain anti-Romney.
My question is simple: Given that both Tax Policies and Energy Prices directly affect where corporations build factories and other forms of employment (call centers, application development, farming, and so on), how will you return manufacturing to America and put our neighbors back to work?
I’d prefer each of you spoke for five minutes without being boorish and interupting each other.
Governor. Barack. I think the two of you are mostly selling used cars, which means I don’t believe anything either one of you says.
So why on earth should I vote for either one of you, instead of for myself?
And remember, I have a can of bullshit repellent with me before you answer.
Gov. Romney – Your opponent has secured endorsements from Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Vladimir Putin…. and needless to say, Sean Penn and Danny Glover. How can you hope to lead the free world and bring us all together when you cannot even get these fucking communists on board?
Mr. President,
Since you have receded from creating real relationships with World Leaders to include our Allies (uh, do we have any left?), is it your intent upon re-election to completely exit from the Middle East entirely?
With this nation being $16T in debt, and a significant portion of that debt held by governments hostile to our interests, specifically China, how would you propose to counter their expansion, particularly when it comes to military expansion in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans, and especially proliferation or control of nuclear weapons given Chinese desire to exert influence over North Korea and Pakistan after 2014?
Mr. President and Governor Romney,
Are either of you willing to suspend your current medical care and coverage and enroll for a year into the VA health care system? The reason for me asking this is simple: When you are visiting one of these hospitals, you are doing so in a pre-announced visit that gives the place fair warning of your arrival. This affords them the time and the opportunity to put on a dog and pony show that allows them to only show you the best of the best at that given time. To find out what is really going on and how the system is failing our veterans, you need to actually go in and have your health care provided by them when they have no prior knowledge of your visit. Only by actually being in the system will you be able to gain the insight of a broken system that continues to fail the veteran.
Both of you claim that our country owes a debt of gratitude towards our veterans but here is a way to actually understand where it is failing and how to fundamentally change it for the better.
“if you paint a rock gold, it is still a rock”
Mr. President,
Why exactly were so many organizations allowed to be exempt from Obamacare but private citizens were denied the same privilege? Shouldn’t everyone be allowed to make this decision for themselves?
Ex-PH2: in a 2-party system, withholding a vote or casting a protest vote is mathematically equivalent for casting a vote for the candidate you like least. This is because your doing so reduces the number of votes the candidate you like least needs to win outright by one.
Either Romney or Obama will end up as the next POTUS. Even if you don’t particularly like either, you should be able to determine which you believe to be the less desirable choice. And given that, you should do what you can to ensure the candidate you like least DOESN’T get the job.
As Heinlein put it years ago (paraphrasing) – it’s often difficult to figure out which candidate to vote for, but it’s usually pretty easy to figure out which candidate you should vote against. And in a 2-party system, not voting (or casting a protest vote) is equivalent to voting for the candidate you like least.
Hondo @21,
I often say that I’ve never, ever voted for anyone. I’ve voted in every election I’ve been able to since 1992. But I’ve never voted for anyone. I’ve always voted against someone. Just once I’d love to have a politician I could vote for.
UtahVet: there are no perfect candidates. There are only perfect fools waiting for a perfect candidate to appear.
The closest I’ve ever seen to a perfect candidate was Reagan in 1984. But Reagan wasn’t perfect, either.
One question, 2 parts:
# 1 Mr. President,
In 2008 as part of your global apology tour, you promised to heal the wounds and bridge the divide between the USA and the world (including Islam). Considering the state of affairs in the North Africa and the Middle East today … how is that Hope and Change thingy working out?
# 2 GOV Romney,
Consiering the aformentioned question to the President … what message will you send to the enemies of the USA specifically radicalized Islamist and Iran on the eve of your Inauguration?
Mr. President, what exactly did you mean when you told Medvedev that you’d have more “flexibility” in your next term, and, can we correctly surmise that you’re planning on giving away the entire fucking farm and the dirt it stands on?
Hondo: please remember what sippy fails to remember, i.e.d., we have a multi-party system, so as the party of one, I can be part of this. And since I follow a strict budget, shop for things at discount and use coupons, and always have some cash left over at the end of each month, I can verify that I know how to operate in the black, instead of in the red.
And you should remember that every campaign speech is a sales pitch, so if I don’t buy the sales pitch, I can vote for myself or for Angela Davis or my cat Mikey.
Just remember, Andrew Jackson was lampooned in the newspapers as a jackass and he liked it so much, he took it as his symbol.
Mr President, what in the fuck made you think you were qualified to run the United States?
Too harsh? Ok. I’ll resubmit.
Mr President, Governor, the primary duty of any government is to provide for the safety and security of it’s citizens. As neither of you, nor your running mates have any military experience, on what basis will you be making your determinations regarding military policy and handling armed conflict? And gentlemen, it is impossible to be too detailed in your answer to this question.
I would answer your question, yes. Our foreign aid to Egypt- part of Carter’s mid-east peace deal- has worked to keep peace between Egypt and Israel for over thirty years.
Ex-PH2: you can indeed vote for your cat, or for Angela Davis, or for yourself. If you do, you’ll be voting for a candidate with precisely zero chance of actually winning. In our two-party system, precisely two candidates have a chance of actually winning any giving Federal and most state elections – the two major party candidates.
By either (1) voting for a candidate with no chance of winning (AKA casting a protest vote) or (2) by staying home, you’ll be reducing the number of votes the major-party candidate you like LEAST needs to win by one. Ergo, that’s equivalent to voting against the major party candidate you can best tolerate.
No, it’s not a perfect system. But it’s the system we have. And we’ll all have to live with the results until the system morphs into something else – which it has done on occasion when one of the two dominant parties collapsed.
And given the “highly stable and effective” nature of most multiparty democracies during history, I’m not exactly keen to see the system morph into something else. For all its faults, the US two-party system appears more stable and enduring – as well as more effective – than the multiparty variants that have cropped up in other democratic nations over time.
Actually, Sippy – one can make a reasonable argument that it was precisely that Carter-era aid that propped up Mubarek long after he would have otherwise been replaced, either by coup or popular revolt. I wouldn’t recommend trotting that out as a great success story if you’re also going to argue that the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt and elsewhere was a “good thing”.
My guess is that Egypt’s experience in getting their ass kicked in 1973 (when the Israelis weathered the storm in the Golan, cut off and surrounded the bulk of Egypt’s armed forces in the Sinai, forced the Suez, and were on their way to Cairo) probably was more instrumental in keeping the peace between Egypt and Israel over the last 40 years. The Egyptians gave it their best shot in 1973 – and still lost, only narrowly avoiding complete catastrophe. And ever since, they’ve feared that the next time Israel wouldn’t stop short of Cairo and/or the complete destruction of the Egyptian armed forces.
Mr Obama and Mr Romney, how are you going to combat the growing dominance of Vladimir Putin on the world stage? With the recent turmoil in the mideast this has opened up the european market for Russian oil and allowed him to push his increased agenda on the world stage. We are also falling behind him and the Chinese on the African and South American continent as much as I would like to return to an isolationist state we cannot afford to. While we have been busy fighting goat herders he has been busy gobbling up oil rights.
My question would involve Operation Fast & Furious:
Why was this Charlie Foxtrot of an “operation” allowed to even start, considering the lack of planning, and lack of tracking of nearly 2000 weapons? Why have the BATFE and DoJ been allowed to stonewall witnesses, and withold evidence from Issa & Grassley and Congress? Why are Holder and other F&F participants not under civil and criminal charges?
How is the government going to reduce this record deficit? Where is the transparency you promised us?